erlang:now() never jumps backwards - it always moves forward
Interval correct
The interval between two erlang:now() calls is expected to correspond to the correct time in real life (as defined by an atomic clock, or better)
Absolute correctness
The erlang:now/0 value should be possible to convert to an absolute and correct date-time, corresponding to the real world date and time (the wall clock)
System correspondence
The erlang:now/0 value converted to a date-time is expected to correspond to times given by other programs on the system (or by functions like os:timestamp/0)
Unique
No two calls to erlang:now on one Erlang node should return the same value